Not that I feel guilty about it, but it's not very cool to sit around and listen to poetry, is it? All poets are foppish failures so self-involved, so blindly arrogant that they think the universe whirls around their filthy word-holes, entranced and panty-wet, correct?

Indeed, but as with all truths there are exceptions. Let me give you a bit of perspective on Billy Childish: He's released well over a hundred record with his various bands, painted thousands of paintings, spewed out 40 books of poetry and two novels (all in his own dyslexic, brutally graphic mutant version of the Queen's English), become entangled with and unsuccessfully distanced himself from artist Tracy Emin (who visibly swiped quite a few of his mannersisms), become arch-enemies with vile douchebag Damien Hirst, created an entire genre of art (Stuckism) and disowned it, cultivated a prize-winning mustache, and still found time to garden and polish his Beatle boots.

What we have here is a disc of spoken word recordings, seemingly done in his kitchen, which came as a bonus disc with the documentary Billy Childish is Dead (which I highly recommend). I shan't comment too much on the poems, as they speak and spit for themselves, but if you're going to bother downloading I recommend you not browse around the internet looking at kitties, or play it while chopping cilantro with your wonderful soul mate, or listen to it on your ipod while using the thighmaster; none of that. Wait until it's late at night, and you're alone and ugly and your head hurts. Wait until the spectre of doom weighs down on you shoulders, crumpling your thin skull into a little fossilized turd. You guilt will save you, you bastard.

1 comment:

Goddamnit, WHY did I choose to reveal the 'Sophie Ellis-Bextor' guilty pleasure when I could have simply implied that Ivor Cutler or Tears For Fears were something I should be ashamed of listening to instead?